Can’t Get You Out Of My Head

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2015

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As much as we might have crazy love for pop music, pop music also loves to drive us crazy. Earworms that grab you and won’t let go; cookie-cutter compositions that bedevil in their unoriginality; strange new sounds that vex, rankle, confound. How does pop music possess the unique ability to get under our skin? We pull apart some of the stickiest songs to try and find out. And listen to our playlist of songs that drive you mad on Spotify. FEATURING The Fine Young Cannibals – She Drives Me Crazy The Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way Katy Perry – California Girls Kesha – Tik Tok Mozart – Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466 Grady Smith – Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013 Grady Smith – Country Stars Who Don’t Like Their Own Records Fletcher Hederson – The Stampede Skrillex – Bangarang Elvis Presley – Jailhouse Rock Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you quit it?
0:07.0	What? Stop it! What's the matter?
0:12.0	You're driving me mad. Oh, I'm sorry. So you hate beautiful music? I mean, it's not
0:18.0	that I hate beautiful music, but I'm trying to concentrate here on doing a show together.
0:21.0	It's just really distracting. Wow, you are grumpy today.
0:28.0	We're going to play a song.
0:35.0	I'm Songwriter Charlie Harding, joined by a music collegeist Nate Sloan, and today on
0:42.0	Switched On Pop, songs that drive us mad. Music seems to have that ability. Music can
0:49.0	rub you the wrong way. It can get your goat. It can turn you into an octogenarian
0:55.0	curmudgeon decades before your time. That's my world. It can make you slightly insane.
1:01.0	What is it about certain songs that drive us mad?
1:06.0	We have divided up three ways in which music can drive us crazy the first earworms.
1:14.0	EARWARDS, aka melodies that burrow deep into your brain and don't let go. Charlie, I'm sorry.
1:29.0	Can you stop playing that song? Dude, okay, EARWARDS is each one unique in its methods
1:38.0	of torturous catchiness, or is there something that ties these diverse hooks together?
1:45.0	Spoiler alert, it's the latter. I don't think that's the proper use of spoiler alert.
1:51.0	I just have to say. I'm spoiling my spoiler alert. I'm sorry. I think that there are exactly three ways in which an
1:58.0	earworm burrows itself into the insides of our brain. The first is it's got to have a really simple
2:05.0	catchy melody. Yes. The second thing is it has to repeat that thing over and over and over
2:12.0	and maybe provide a subtle variation to reset the loop that it starts. I think that the third thing that we hear in
2:19.0	an earworm is that it has some sort of unique tonal quality, something that defines it as its own work.
2:25.0	All right, simplicity, repetition, parentheses, and variation, unique tonal quality.
	...

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